When and why should a contracting officer go to a lawyer?

When and why should a contracting officer go to a lawyer? The way that a contracting person answers that question will tell you what they think about the role and the responsibility of the contracting officer.

I often ask contracting personnel in my classes how they would determine what the rule is about this or that. Very often, too often, the answer is: Ask a lawyer. That answer sends old-timers like me up the wall. Most of us think it is disgraceful to go to a lawyer with such a basic question. In our view the proper answer is: You should know the rule if you?re doing something to which the rule applies. If you don't know, then you should look it up. The answer, "Ask a lawyer," is entirely unacceptable. So, when and why should a CO go to a lawyer?

I teach a class in which the students are given the following scenario:

During a source selection, the evaluators tell the CO that one offeror?s technical proposal is ambiguous on a certain point. The statement of work requires that the contractor provide a device having a capacity of X. The proposal is unclear whether the device has X capacity or one-half that amount. The evaluators need to know what the offeror is actually proposing so that they can determine whether the proposal is acceptable or not. They want the CO to call the offeror and get an answer. The call should take no more than a few moments, and the answer would permit the evaluators to wrap up their work.

The RFP had notified offerors that the government intended to award the contract without discussions. Thus, the issue: If the CO makes the inquiry, would it constitute clarification or discussion? If clarification, then the agency can ask and still award without discussions, but if discussion, then the agency must conduct discussions with all offerors within a competitive range and permit those offerors to revise their proposals before it can make an award. The extra steps would take at least another month and expose the agency to the risk of a protest about its competitive range determination. It would also expose the agency to the risk of a protest about its conduct of discussions. Since the agency put offerors on notice that it intended to award without discussions it is not obligated to inquire, but if it doesn?t inquire the offeror?s proposal must be considered unacceptable, which would make the offeror ineligible for award. That would be too bad, since the offeror is considered to be an exceptionally good contractor, its technical proposal is considered to be otherwise excellent, and it has offered a very good price. Yet, good contractors with very good proposals would remain in the competition. What should the contracting officer do?

The rules about clarification and discussion are in FAR 15.306. Any CO who conducts source selections for a living should know those rules word for word. Unfortunately, you can memorize those words and you still won?t have any idea about the distinction between clarification or discussion. You might think that you do. After all, the language in FAR 15.306(a) and 15.306(d) make the distinction seem quite clear. But the distinction between clarification and discussion has been developed mainly in GAO case law. The FAR simply does not reflect that case law.

So how do you learn about the case law? There are several sources that discuss the clarification/discussion issue in depth, e.g., Feldman, Government Contract Awards: Negotiation and Sealed Bids, and Nash, et al., Source Selection: The Competitive Negotiation Process, 2d ed. I wrote an in-depth analysis of the distinction for the September 2007 issue of The Nash & Cibinic Report, entitled, ?Postscript V: Clarifications vs. Discussions,? cited by Westlaw as: 21 N&CR ? 45. A CO who conducts source selections should be familiar with those publications, or others like them, and should read GAO and Court of Federal Claims protest decisions.

A CO who is familiar with the FAR and the GAO case law should be able to decide the issue in the scenario. The GAO would consider the inquiry to be discussion, not clarification, because resolution of the ambiguity is necessary in order to determine whether or not the proposal is acceptable. See, e.g., Nu-Way, Inc., Comp. Gen. Dec. B-296435.5, 2005 CPD ? 195:

QUOTE

When an offeror is given the opportunity to remove an ambiguity from its proposal, especially where the information to be provided is essential for determining the proposal's acceptability, such an exchange constitutes discussions.

In light of the GAO case law, the contracting officer?s legitimate choices are: (1) refuse to make the inquiry, reject the offer as unacceptable, and award without discussions, or (2) establish a competitive range, conduct discussions, and solicit and evaluate final proposal revisions. Should the CO consult the agency lawyer? If so, for what? What can the lawyer say that the CO does not already know?

The lawyer in the agency legal office functions as in-house counsel. He or she is not the CO's lawyer, but the agency's lawyer, and represents the agency, looking out for its organizational interests. In working with a CO, the lawyer is not seeking to support the CO in any personal sense, is not seeking to fulfill the CO's wishes or to get the CO what he wants. The lawyer is seeking to ensure that decisions and courses of action are good for the agency as a whole.

A CO should not assume that a lawyer will know the answer offhand. Government contract law is a specialized field. Government lawyers work in a lot of specialized fields and a particular lawyer might not have much experience practicing government contract law. Even a lawyer who practices government contract law might not have done much source selection work and might not be familiar with the case law or literature about clarification and discussion. But a lawyer is formally trained to think, especially about legal issues. Law school is a school about how to think about problems in a certain way and in an orderly manner. Lawyers understand legal principles, rules, and procedures. They know how to frame and research an issue, how to determine the current status of the case law, how to spot distinguishing facts in a particular case, and how to argue a case--skills that contracting officers are not expected to possess and ordinarily do not have. A good in-house lawyer is a counselor in the best sense of that word: a person trained to give professional guidance to a client, a source of knowledgeable, dispassionate, considered advice.

Contracting decisions are the CO?s to make, not the lawyer?s, at least in theory. Yet many COs complain that their lawyers ?won?t let me? do this or that. What has probably happened is a clash of views. The CO wants to do X. The lawyer thinks that X is unwise or illegal and not in the best interests of the agency. The CO can't proceed without the lawyer's "legally sufficient" stamp of approval. Someone at a higher level than both must ultimately decide, and the CO and the lawyer must make their cases. The CO is at an understandable disadvantage. The boss probably doesn't fully understand the issue, but her lawyer is telling her that it would be unwise to go along with the CO. Weighing the arguments of both sides and not fully understanding the issue, the boss is likely to think that deciding in favor of the lawyer is the safest course of action. This can lead some lawyers to run roughshod over COs, especially if they do not think the COs are competent. Yet the CO is responsible for any decision or contract bearing his or her signature, and when a regulation calls for a CO decision the CO cannot be directed to decide in a specified way.

Many COs are mainly administrative technicians. They process paperwork and do data entry, but are not competent to make sound decisions. Too many do not know the regulations as they should and do not read cases, books, and articles. They do not have the professional knowledge or skills they need, or the personality and personal skills, to enable them to take charge, innovate, and decide. Their leaders don?t trust them and thus tie their hands with policies and reviews and rely on the lawyers to make contracting decisions. Indeed, many government lawyers that I know are exasperated by the lack of knowledge and capability among the COs they support.

Many if not most agencies require COs to submit their files for legal review in order to establish "legal sufficiency." Such reviews have become a kind of contracting quality assurance, and some lawyers use them, perhaps unconsciously, to manage the contracting process based on their personal views about the best way to do things. (Don't use that evaluation factor. Don't use that scoring method. Don't use that procedure. Use this language in the proposal preparation instruction instead of the language you wrote.) In an ideal world, this wouldn?t happen. In that world the practice of sending every contract valued in excess of a certain dollar amount to the legal office for review would be considered unnecessary and wasteful, and COs would send files to the legal office only for input about issues such as the propriety and adequacy of a special contract clause, or a dispute settlement with far-reaching implications. But in an ideal world COs would be genuine experts and far more knowledgeable about contracting than agency lawyers.

So when and why should a CO go to a lawyer? When it's a matter of choice, a CO should never go to a lawyer for basic information or to ensure that a file reflects compliance with well-established rules. A CO should not need a lawyer for that. But when an issue is complex and the legal implications are significant, something a competent CO should be able to recognize, then a CO should go to a lawyer for professional insight and advice. A CO should make a tentative decision about what to do based on the issue, her understanding of the applicable rule, and the pertinent facts, and then visit the lawyer to discuss it and the pros and cons of one course of action versus another. The conversation might go something like this: "Hi, Jack. I?ve got a situation. This is the scenario, this is my assessment, and this is what I?m thinking of doing. I?d like your professional opinion and advice. What do you think?" And a CO shouldn't get frustrated if the lawyer says, "Well, you could do this or you could do that, and it might turn out this way or it might turn out that way." After all, the CO was seeking advice, not direction. Right?

I just left a job where this problem had paralyzed the entire contracting activity. That contracting activity was at a certain legislative agency who does auditing work that shall remain nameless. The OGC there designated a former bid protest attorney to serve as "Procurement Counsel." He reviewed everything, from RFQs, purchase orders and contract mods under $100K to RFPs, all RFP amendments, and all task orders. Procurement Counsel even reviewed and approved each and every technical evaluation both at the individual and consensus level. As he was a bid protest attorney, his perspective was always skewed to "avoiding" a protest (which is impossible, you can only try to win protests if you get them) and not to actually achieving best value or any efficiency in the acquisition process.

The Director of the acquisition shop, a lawyer by training also, mandated this in policy.

The result of this "quality assurance" was to basically shut down any discussion of regs or knowledge of regs by any of the 1102s who worked there. I arrived from extensive experience in other shops, and whenever I tried to question anything, even modification authorities, immediately the question became a legal one. "We have to run that by Procurement Counsel" became the mantra whenever the FAR or anything was brought up. It was sad and highly inefficient place, and that's why I didn't stay there for very long.